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To say that HTC has had a challenging time rolling out Android Nougat to their flagship HTC 10 device in Europe would be… well, it would be putting it nicely.  The fact is, it has been a debacle.  It originally rolled out back in November but was stopped due to software issues.  It was resumed, then stopped once again for “technical” issues.  So will this third attempt finally stick?  Let’s all hope so.

If you are in mainland Europe and have a 10, you should start seeing the OTA update to move you to Nougat over the course of the next few days.  That update will require a reboot of course but will not wipe your phone (last week HTC released the update for those who wanted to manually flash that wiped their devices by design).   Overall the update should take you about 30 minutes from start to finish but make sure you are on Wi-Fi to do the download of the update as it is just over 1GB in size.

As expected, Google has released the February Android Security Bulletin today, highlighting the security vulnerabilities and fixes addressed since last month.  The company has also released the OTA updates for the February builds which means that owners of compatible Nexus and Pixel devices will get the update shortly.

Like last month, the February update consists of two distinct patches.  The first patch, dated February 1, deals with general vulnerabilities in Android Nougat while the second patch, dated February 5, is more specific to Nexus and Pixel devices.  Both patches have security fixes but the second patch deals with security patches with specific device drivers.  In all there are 35 fixes, 8 of which are considered critical and 18 are considered high priority.  You can read about all of them in the Bulletin release notes.

A new update to Google Maps for Android is rolling out and with it comes a much improved places near you tab and real time commute information.  All of this information can be found by swiping up in Google Maps which will now display a three-tab page.  The first tab is Places which has been in Maps for a while now.  This gives you local places such as places to eat, have a drink, ATMs and fuel stations that are near you.  The Places tab not only serves as a great place to discover something new but also gives you places that you have been before so you can revisit them.  Functionally, you won’t find much difference in this release over what is there now.  It has just been cleaned up a bit and put into this more contemporary navigation tab model.

The new driving tab is designed to give you real time ETAs to home and work.  It also gives you nearby traffic conditions and expected delays.  Equally, if you want real time traffic information but don’t need turn-by-turn navigation, you can tap the Start Driving button and go directly into Driving Mode in Google Maps.  For this feature to work, you need to have stored your home and work address with your Google account.  You can actually set those up within Maps under Settings>Your Places.

While there were a few bright spots, the Android tablet market continued to constrict in the last quarter of 2016 according to Strategy Analytics.  The site Q4 2016 report is out and with it, you see that overall, Android tablet sales dropped by 10% year-over-year with Samsung seeing a 10% drop themselves year-over-year.  Interestingly, relatively new comer Huawei saw a 49% increase in growth over last year as they made their first significant efforts in the tablet space in 2016.  It seems to have paid off – at least for now.  Amazon also enjoyed a nice growth rate of 21% thanks to their Fire lineup of Android-powered tablets.

The news on tablet sales didn’t just impact Android.  Apple saw a 19% drop in iPad sales year-over-year in Q4 2016.